One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. This year, we decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our Backstory questionnaire!
When Tom CJ Brown heard about an artist residency aboard a cargo ship in 2015, he knew he'd found the perfect setting for a romance film. But I felt the setting of a cargo ship was too predatory for a heteronormative love story and realized this all-male environment was the perfect place for a queer relationship. And that's not all he realized. I realized the real reason I wanted to write a gay love story was probably that I was gay which was news to me.
That revelatory idea led to Christopher at Sea, a 21-minute short directed and co-written by Brown that screened as part of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival Animation Short Film Program. Brown took his inspiration seriously: I embarked as a passenger on a cargo ship for 21 days as a research trip to gather reference imagery and add some realism to the melodrama of my fantasies. In the short, reality and fantasy blur together amid vibrant animated sequences that illustrate Christopher's infatuation with a male crew member on a cargo ship.
Below, discover the challenges that came with animating the film, how puppets prompted Brown's decision to become a filmmaker, and why queer stories are crucially needed now.
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One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. This year, we decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our Backstory questionnaire!
